


Say You'll Be Mine

by shimcko



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Confessions, Fluff, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, One Shot, Soft Boys, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff, and keith is soft, klance, lance is a nervous boy, so so soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 22:31:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13580298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimcko/pseuds/shimcko
Summary: Lance has a hard time remembering his perfect confession to Keith for Valentine's day, so he makes himself a trusty backup plan.





	Say You'll Be Mine

**Author's Note:**

> an early valentine's day project! this was tooth-rotting to write. enjoy! 
> 
> <3

Call asking a guy out in Valentine’s day cliché, but the guy who still relied on lame one-liners and finger-guns as a main method of flirting until about a month ago would never even begin to think so.

Coming to the realization that you’re in love can be as liberating as it can be suffocating. Liberating, because everything finally makes sense, all of the practical heart attacks when they so much as look your way, and all of the nervous stammering that’ll come out of nowhere when they ask you something as simple as “How did you like the movie?” has a reason you can wrap your head around. Suffocating, because it walks the thin line between turning this newfound love into something special, and absolute heartbreak.

Lance has had his heart broken before, it was far from a foreign concept to him, and he was sure that most of the people in the senior class of Voltron High could say the same. Your first heartbreak should be a lesson, everyone says, so that you can learn from your mistakes, so that you can enter into your next relationship more cautiously - and Lance took being cautious to a whole new level when it came to the breathtaking beauty that was Keith Kogane.

He had never paid so much attention to the things that left his mouth, and the actions his body would carry through until he met Keith. Shitty pick-up lines were a thing of the past, and moves like putting his arm over the back of his seat in a movie theater would only end poorly - and might even end with a punch to the jaw. 

But that’s one of the things Lance liked so much about Keith. He was different. And different was exciting. He wasn’t easy, he wasn’t weak of will or opinion. Keith was headstrong and strong hearted, was openly passionate about his interests and unafraid to speak out against what he despised, or what he felt wasn’t right - and God, did Lance live for that million-watt smile. 

He met Keith through a mutual friend, Shiro, who Lance has lived next to since he moved to the states when he was eight. Ten years, and uncountable amount of barbecues, block parties, and shindigs later, Lance considered Shiro much like a brother - though, Lance had plenty of those, four.

Shiro, the captain of the school’s fencing team, met Keith when he joined the team. They hit it off, and soon, Shiro began to bring Keith along whenever he and the rest of their friends would hang after school - Pidge, Hunk, and Allura. 

Four months of interest, three months of confusion, and an ongoing two months of pining led Lance to February 14th, Valentine’s Day, and he was determined to finally do something about this little crush that had been spiralling out of hand. 

Lance was set on doing this right. He couldn’t rely on any of his old methods. This wasn’t just some girl he’d made two-seconds of eye contact with on the street, this was-  
well, this was a Keith.  
And Keiths were a rare breed, you see.

He wondered if the three red roses he had bought for the occasion was overly sappy, a sort of sappy that would turn Keith off rather than on, but, he wanted to make sure his true intentions and feelings shone through.

Lance spent the entire night before the Fourteenth practicing what he was going to say; in the mirror, to his youngest sister, into the open air as he paced about his bedroom. Whenever he found the right words to say he’d forget them completely upon his second attempt, leaving him literally pulling at his hair in frustration. In a last resort effort, Lance wrote down what he felt was good enough down on the fronts of index cards, and read them over and over to himself - but even so, memorization was a lost cause.

So, here Lance stands. At the top of the hallway, three roses in his hand, index cards in his back pocket, and his heart hammering in his chest. He could see Keith from where he stood, standing in front of his locker; one hand fiddling with his lock, and the other tucking strands of his long, raven black hair behind his ear.

It takes all of Lance’s willpower not to swoon right on the spot, his free hand even reaching for his heart through his baseball tee, tugging and bunching up the fabric. 

He was so close, and within a matter of seconds, Lance would have to put all of his planning to good use, and put his heart right out in the open for Keith to either accept or reject.

Here goes everything.

With a deep breath and a last word of encouragement to himself, Lance takes off down the hall. He slips through students walking in small packs, and nearly shrieks his apology when he trips over a seventh graders’ feet - sending him to stumble right in front of Keith. His clumsy arrival makes himself noticed immediately, and Lance only has time to hide his roses behind his back before those brilliant eyes Keith had were zoned in on him.

“Got two left feet, McClain?” Keith asks with an incredulous chuckle and a cock of his brow. He sizes Lance up from head to two, and his gaze lands on Lance’s bent arm. With a curious tilt of his head, Keith finally meets Lance’s eye, and prods once more. “Are you hiding something?” 

Those eyes, those damn eyes were two great, big grey oceans, and boy, was Lance lost at sea. 

It takes a few calls of his name for Lance to be broken free of his trance, and he lets out an embarrassed laugh when he comes to; his voice is an octave higher than he’d like to admit. “I’m not hiding anything!” Lance chirps in his defense. He clears his throat immediately after, shaking his head as if it would shake off his nerves as well. 

Lance is sure he’s freaking Keith out by the expression he wears, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion, and his teeth dig into his lower lip, as if he’s trying to decode just what was making Lance so flustered. “You sure about that?” 

“Yeah! Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I just-” The words come out in another overly-excited, jumbled mess, so Lance wills himself to breathe again, blue eyes falling closed as he fills his lungs, and when he empties them, he’s somewhat convinced that he can give this a try.

“I’ve got something to say.” 

Keith closes his locker door, and inches closer, one hand adjusting the left strap of his backpack. He leans his shoulder against the metal, and offers the boy in front of him his full attention. 

“Uh-huh?”

Lance must have been a fish all of a sudden, for his mouth opens and closes involuntarily, because a second comes where he feels that he has the right words, and then another comes to tell him that he couldn’t be more wrong. “I… I really-”

Frozen. He was frozen as a lake in the dead of winter, and he had no way out, no escape, not when Keith stared so intently at him, and not when he had so quickly become so expectant for an answer. What was he going to do?

Lance’s eyes widen when a realization hits him like a ton of bricks, and his free hand reaches into his back pocket to pull out the small set of index cards. He laughs, relieved to have some sort of saving grace in the situation, something that could save him from looking like even more of an idiot than he’s sure he’s already come off as. 

Blue irises flicker between the small sheets of paper - which he holds above his abdomen - and the set of grey ones before him, and he begins to read, slowly, but surely. 

“Keith,” He starts, offering him a glance. “I have known you for a long time now. And it’s been really great getting to know you, but-” The issue of having to turn to another card hadn’t occurred to Lance until now, as this had been a last resort option. How was he supposed to do that without letting Keith see the roses? 

The answer was simple. He couldn’t. 

With a defeated sigh, Lance pulls his other hand out from behind his back, and tries to lift the card on top of the small pile and flip it to the back with his pinky finger and his thumb, while the other three continue to grip at the three roses. 

It doesn’t go as Lance had planned. Lance doesn’t have time to register Keith’s question, because all of his index cards go scattering onto the floor below him, falling out of order, wrong-side-up; spelling out failure for his confession.

“Are those for me?”

Lance lets out a shocked yelp, and bends his knees to instantly begin picking the cards up with his free hand, and upon realizing that this would be much easier if both of his hands are freed, he doesn’t give his next request a second thought. The hand carrying the roses - not of love, but of doom - shoot up in Keith’s direction, high enough for him to reach. “Hold these for a second?” He asks, stumbling pathetically over his words.

Lance focuses his eyes in on the floor so he doesn’t have to see whatever expression had taken over Keith’s face, but he doesn’t have to see him to know that he was hesitant in taking the roses from him - it took him a second to actually respond. 

“Okay.” Keith answers simply, quietly, taking the flowers into his hands, and leaving Lance to shuffle through the cards. He finds himself forgetting to put them in the correct order, only slapping the card he knew should have followed the first on the top of the pile, and jumping back up to his feet.

“Sorry about that,” Lance ducks his head down sheepishly, still refusing to meet Keith’s eye. “As I was saying, I want the chance to know you more. I love being your friend, and hanging out with you and the guys and Pidge, but, I want-” With a tad more confidence, Lance turns to the next card, ready to deliver the big line--

The card was upside down.

Lance’s eyes squint at the card, and he turns it around, the break in his momentum causing all of the gross, panicky nerves to rise in his throat again. He reads the first line, “Somewhere nice to eat.” 

He’s positive he’s going to explode on the spot. His heart threatens to burst and his head is reeling, hands frantic as they search for what should have followed, and the words are on the tip of his tongue, he just needs to see them-

“Somewhere nice to eat? This wasn’t the next card, no, no, this was fifth, or maybe even sixth,” Lance begins talking aloud to himself in frustration, having lost his patience and probably his mind somewhere along the way - at least, that’s what it must of looked like.

Oh, screw this.

“Y’know what? Look. I really like you. I’m really, really into you, and your stupid, pretty eyes, and your dumb, pretty laugh, and your idiotic way of making me feel all warm and good inside. What I want do is ask you out on a-” 

Lance’s head whips upwards, running on steam fully powered by the peak of his nerves and jitters, and he swears he’s just about to finish, just about to add, ‘date with me’, when he finds a sight that shuts him right up.

A smile. Not like a normal Keith smile, something unlike anything he’d ever had the pleasure of witnessing before. His eyes crinkled up into crescent moons, his lips curled upwards in a way warm enough to rival the sun, and his nose scrunched in the slightest, most endearing way.

“You put yourself through all this trouble just to ask me out?” He asks, words practically dripping in honey. It made Lance feel weak in the knees, to be completely honest, his heart skipping more beats than what he was sure was healthy.

With one hand, Lance rubs at the back of his neck, fingers toying with the short brown locks there to distract himself enough as to keep from melting. 

“Well, you’re kinda worth the trouble. I wanted to do this right, y’know?” Lance replies honestly, finally feeling as if he could properly breathe now that he’s put everything out on the table. 

That lethal smile Keith wore only deepened into something more, something richer than anything Lance had ever seen. Sheepish, Keith tucks a few more stray strands of his hair behind his ear, and he offers a shrug of his shoulders.

“Then finish asking me.” 

Lance’s face drops. “Finish?” He stammers, “You get it, right? You get that I’m head over heels for you, and wanna do something about it?” He asks Keith in disbelief. He was certain that his intentions were more than clear by now, why was Keith trying to make him suffer more than he has to?

“I get it completely. I just don’t want the time you must have put into this to go to waste.” Keith answers genuinely, pushing himself up off of the locker, and standing up straight. “So, go ahead. Ask me.” He bites back his growing grin, and Lance mentally begs for someone to pinch him, because this boy can’t possibly be real - he was being too good to possibly be true.

Lance wills himself to fulfill this one request, and he feels confident in the fact that he can, because those soft eyes and words as smooth as silk can only mean that this fantastic thing that Lance has been feeling for so long isn’t a dead-end, but a two-way road. 

The grin that blooms onto Lance’s features is broad, broad enough to make his cheeks ache and broad enough that he fears he could look too dorky - but it didn’t matter. Not when Keith could possibly be his. 

Triumphantly, Lance shoves the mess of index cards back into his pocket, and allows his hands to rest on his hips instead, more relaxed, more self-assured. He traces back his unfinished thought, and follows through accordingly. “What I want to do is ask you out on a date. We can see a movie, or go eat, or go to an ice rink or something? Anything that’s cool with you is cool with me.” 

Keith nods his head, both of his hands curled around the three individual flowers. “That sounds great. I’ll text you? We can decide after school?” He proposes in return, sending Lance to nod as well, just in a much more evidently eager fashion. 

“Perfect.” 

Lance was ready to give Keith a much easier question, an offer to walk him to his next class, even if it would mean being late for his own, but Keith acts upon a plan of his own. He gets up on the tips of his toes, and presses a kiss to Lance’s cheek. “Can’t wait.” Keith murmurs sweetly against his skin, and takes off in the other direction, a slight sway in his step. 

And for the second time today, Lance is frozen, as motionless as a statue. His blue eyes have gone wide, and he’s certain that cupid has drawn back his bow as far as his small arms would allow, and shot an arrow with a heart-shaped head right through his chest. 

He would have been standing there all day if it weren’t for Keith stopping, looking over his shoulder to teasingly call after him. “Are you coming, Lance?”

Lance jolts back to life, and turns around to jog after his date for the night to close the space between them. “Coming!”

The amount of willpower he used to keep himself from shouting or whooping in joy was unmeasurable, and was strong as the amount he used to refrain from sweeping the incredible boy walking beside him off of his feet, and twirling him around. He must’ve looked ridiculous, really, his hand having risen to cover his mouth, since laughter expressing his mix of relief and excitement kept spilling from his lips, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Because tonight, he had a date with the cutest boy in school.

**Author's Note:**

> aaaahhh this was so fun, love my soft boys.  
> lance is a dorky, flustered, bi mess. sorry.  
> thank you for reading! feedback/comments are very appreciated! <3


End file.
